Collegial Governance Goals

A. Formally encourage collegiality and broad, constructive participation by all constituencies of the governance process.

B. Preserve core values and enhance those practices and procedures that have proven effective in the past.

C. Clarify and simplify the consultation and governance structure. Make explicit and coherent the scope, charge, authority, reporting relationships, membership, and methods of each group assigned a role within the process.

D. Distinguish and articulate the specific roles and responsibilities of college administrators relative to those of other governance groups.

E. Eliminate unnecessary redundancy and/or the superimposition of unnecessary layers within the decision-making processes. “Flatten” the structure to the extent possible, consistent with other goals.

F. Seek a reasonable, realistic, and balanced distribution of workloads imposed by the governance processes.

G. Ensure those with expertise in specific disciplines are assigned a necessary and central role in the formulation of recommendations concerning those disciplines, while encouraging broad participation in the decision-making process.

H. Eliminate bottlenecks and provide multiple points of effective entry into the process for anyone seeking to introduce recommendations for consideration.

I. Devise a governance structure that is easy to understand and to convey throughout the institution.

J. Ensure that college governance practices, processes, and structures are in line with prevailing statute, regulation, policy, and procedure.